SMITH AT 300: ADAM SMITH AND THE IDEA OF “POLICE”

“The more opulent therefore the society, labour will always be so much the dearer and work so much the cheaper, and if some opulent countries have lost several of their manufactures and some branches of their commerce by having been undersold in foreign markets by the traders and artisans of poorer countries, who were contented with less profit and smaller wages, this will rarely be found to have been merely the effect of the opulence of the one country and the poverty of the other. Some other cause, we may be assured, must have concurred. The rich country must have been guilty of some great error in its police.” ED 2.12–2.13